


The Good Stuff

by entanglednow



Category: Grimm (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-04
Updated: 2012-01-04
Packaged: 2017-10-28 22:41:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/312967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/entanglednow/pseuds/entanglednow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A lesson in coffee.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Good Stuff

The crime scene photos spread across the table make no more sense to Nick than they did three days ago. The body makes perfect sense, twenty seven year old male, half rolled into the water, skin taken from his calves and ankles; time of death, early morning. The other photos are pictures from different angles, and the prints leading away from the crime, back to the road. Only they're not footprints, for a start they're square, and only an inch across.

No matter how many times he looks at them they don't make any sense. Five cups of horrendous, lukewarm coffee have dulled his brain into a sort of determined paste of frustration and tiredness. A few months ago Nick would have been able to puzzle this out. He would have known there was an answer, all he had to do was think hard enough to find it. A few months ago 'outside the box' hadn't been quite so strange a concept. He would at least have expected suspects that were human. Only that's the thing, he doesn't know for certain that this is a Grimm thing. People could be smart when they were trying to get away with murder, they were willing to think outside the box too. Nick knows that if he's always wondering if the murderer is some sort of creature he's going to waste a lot of time following leads that turn out to be completely irrelevant. And if he always assumes human involvement he's going to be forever second-guessing himself over the little clues, that regularly turn out to go nowhere.

But if he doesn't find some ground between the two he's going to go slowly mad - or quickly mad. Finding out who you are is supposed to make life easier, you're supposed to understand things when you know who you're supposed to be. Instead it's just given him a hundred more possibilities, a thousand more questions to ask. Only you have to find someone who knows the answers to those questions. Because Nick's damned if he has a clue what's going on any more.

He lays a hand on the photos, and shuffles them all back together. Then rubs at his eyes in frustration. He has a headache, and there isn't enough coffee in the world for this.

He doesn't know what's going on. But he knows someone who might.

***

It's late, but not so late that there aren't still lights on, so Nick doesn't feel too bad about knocking. He's pretty sure Monroe knows it's him, not just because of his improved senses, but because Nick's the only one who's taken to intruding in his life at random hours of the day, and night. It's probably just easier to assume.

Monroe takes one look at him, and doesn't bother giving even a token protest, before leaving the door to swing open, and heading for the kitchen.

"Seriously, do you not have a home of your own to go to?" The words are irritated, but there's already a beer sliding across the table to wobble awkwardly, close enough that it's easier to catch it before it falls. Nick's briefly worried that the power of bad coffee and alcohol combined will do something hideous to his nervous system, but he's already swallowing.

"I was hoping you'd still be up."

"Of course you were." Monroe waves a hand, which is the least enthusiastic 'out with it' gesture Nick thinks he's ever come across.

Nick slides the envelope across to him, and Monroe sets down his beer, grumbling under his breath. He fishes inside, and then spills the photographs in front of him. Judging by the face he's pulling it doesn't mean anything to him either. Nick leans forward, taps his fingers against the prints pressed into the mud.

"Do you have any idea what made those?"

Monroe frowns, turns a couple of them round. "Rogue, murderous stilt walkers, I don't know?" He shrugs, and uses his fingers to push the photos back across the table.

The disappointment's like a physical weight, and Nick's too tired to hide it, even if he knows it isn't fair.

"You really have no idea?"

"I'm sorry I don't exist purely to dispense answers every time you want them."

"That's not what I meant. I don't think that." Because he doesn't think that, even though, yeah, he knows that's what it probably looks like sometimes...most of the time, ok, all of the time.

"Really?" he gets a finger pointed at him. "Because it seems to me you pretty much show up, pump me for information, and then go off into the night to do something foolish and unreasonable."

"I don't just pump you for information," Nick protests, even though there's a guilty part of him that knows he's done exactly that, more than once. "I need someone to back and forth with. Someone who isn't going to have me committed if I suggest that the murderer was - I don't know - a giant doll-man stitched out of cloth."

Monroe has pulled his beer away from his mouth and is watching him with an incredulous expression. "A giant doll-man stitched out of cloth, really?"

"Monroe, focus."

"You weren't hugged enough as child were you?" Monroe's concern almost looks genuine, and Nick rubs a hand over his face, tries to drag them both back to the matter at hand.

"Look, I'm just saying that when I come and see you I don't feel like the lone mad person in the room."

Monroe offers him that suspicious squint that he's becoming strangely familiar with. "Did you just call me a mad person?"

"No, that's not what I meant."

This is all going very wrong.

"Oh, so that was a compliment?"

Nick throws his mental hands up.

"I'm sorry, look, I really do appreciate that you're willing to let me come round. I know it doesn't look like it but I do. Everyone else I know is asleep, or has cases of their own and I don't even know for sure if this is an actual Grimm thing or just ordinary messed-up human beings killing each other." He makes a wreck of his hair and tries not to look like he has nowhere else to go, even if he's just admitted exactly that. "I'm sorry, I've just been up forever and nothing makes sense, and I really didn't come here to take it out on you."

Monroe eyeballs him over his beer, then sighs - and Nick must look even more pathetic than he feels.

"You want to brainstorm a little?" Monroe says, and it sounds grudging, but Nick suspects that maybe it's not. So he nods.

"I would really like that."

***

He wakes up on the couch, breathing the strange and indefinable smell of the cushions. Someone had taken his shoes off, and thrown a blanket over him. He's not entirely sure when. Though he has fuzzy, indistinct memories of four in the morning. His neck hurts, there's a shaft of sunlight trying to slice his head in two, and he feels exactly as tired as he had the night before. The floor in front of him is full of photographs and pieces of paper - one of them has a doodle of a tiger on it. He's fairly certain that wasn't one of the possible suspects.

It occurs to him that Monroe has probably been up for hours, wandering the house, doing things around him, and Nick thinks he should probably be ashamed of his lack of cop instincts, or Grimm instincts. But he'd been awake for nearly three days straight, so he's going to cut himself a little slack.

Speaking of Monroe, he chooses that moment to wander past, and Nick's view of him is mostly upside down, but he looks considerably more awake than Nick feels. Which is unfair, so very unfair, because Nick would give anything to feel that awake.

"Gnh," Nick offers, much to Monroe's amusement, and attempts to sit up, without falling off the couch.

The mug in Monroe's hand smells like both coffee and something foreign and exotic at the same time, and it's stabbing at something inside Nick's brain, something needy and aggressive. Something that never once managed to be satisfied by his own cheap brand, or the even cheaper kind, that was possibly even grown at the station.

Monroe must notice because he rolls his eyes, and holds the mug out.

Nick doesn't even bother to take it from him, he just wraps his hands around Monroe's, and pulls the whole thing up to his mouth. He knows as soon as he inhales that it's going to shake his sense of self. It's still hot, but not too hot, and he takes a mouthful, feels the low burn of it roll around in his mouth, swallows. It's impossible to form any sort of opinion because he can feel his entire nervous system giving a slow stretch, and he knows he's making some sort of appreciative noise that he's only previously made while naked.

Monroe's giving him a half amused and half exasperated look, and Nick really needs to work on his personal space issues, or at least let go.

Or maybe just beg Monroe to make him coffee for the rest of his life.

"What is this?" he demands, when he can stop drinking it.

"It's coffee."

"This is not coffee," Nick insists, because he feels like he has some experience. "Coffee doesn't taste like that."

"That's because you buy the crap that tastes like shoes, floor polish and old dirt. This, this is the good stuff. I usually only get it out for special occasions, but you looked like you could use it. I was going to pour you one when you woke up."

Nick realises he's still holding on, like he's afraid it'll be taken away, and forces himself to unwind his hand.

"Sorry." He watches Monroe take the mug and swallows. "Thanks for letting me stay."

Monroe shrugs. "No problem, you're much less annoying when you're asleep. Less demanding too. Even if my whole house now smells like leather and cheap aftershave."

"It's not that cheap," Nick says with a frown.

"Smells cheap." Monroe's judging him, and it's really unfair.

"So, tell me, what do I have to do to get some more of that coffee?"

Monroe leans against the arm of the couch, leaves the mug close enough that Nick can still smell it, and that's so obviously on purpose he can't even complain.

"I dunno, I think I'm kind of enjoying this shift of power in our relationship. I could set you a quest. I could make you -"

Nick can't help stealing the mug off his knee again, Monroe's fingers are warm under his own, but he doesn't try and get it back.

"You're really bad at this." It's a grumble more than genuine irritation.

"It was going to get cold," Nick says through the steam.


End file.
